


wood and string

by detectivemeer



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dehumanization, Dissociation, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 06:44:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4656672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/detectivemeer/pseuds/detectivemeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Some of us are <strong>human</strong>.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	wood and string

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Skittles Tumblr Ficlets](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2112468) by [Loz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loz/pseuds/Loz). 



When's a boy not a boy?

-

Scott McCall was born--

Was he born? Does he count, the before. The weak original. Maybe: Scott McCall was _made_ in the forest, built from teeth and blood. Wood and string.

-

“I’ve almost got her,” Scott says. She’s just a baby. Torn feathers scatter around her thin feet. He hums softly, whispering, “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you. Just stay still for a second, you’ll be okay.” Finally she stops flapping and he tugs gently on her wing, freeing it from a diamond gap in the chain link fence. She hops away a few feet, stretching her wingspan tentatively.

“Frickin' pigeon whisperer,” Stiles laughs, hitting him on the back of his shoulder with an open palm. She shakes her head, beak whipping back and forth. Then, darts skyward, only struggling for a moment to get off the ground before she sails seamless through the air. "You're too good, Scotty, I swear. Come on, there's a little old lady down the block who needs help crossing the street."

Scott stands, wiping his hands on his pants. "Hey, Ms. Jones lives that way and she gives me cookies when I help with her groceries. 'Sides, you're the one who spotted the bird."

"Yeah, and you're the one who weeds Ms. Jones' front yard in the summer for store bought cookies." He shakes his head. "Admit it! You're some goody-two-shoes robot sent here to make the rest of us feel bad about ourselves."

Scott laughs.

-

 _Do you bleed?_ The thought is wild, half formed. Allison’s blood is on his shirt. He stares at himself in his bathroom mirror. His mouth is weird, wrong. It’s dark. He can’t see the whole shape of him, parts of his head blurring to black. His cheeks are razor thin. His chest is a ghost.

He tears his claws down his face, beneath his eye to the edge of his jaw. His blood is shadow. He can’t even feel it.

-

If he dug deep down inside himself, would his bones be straw? Maybe everyone around him can see the truth he can’t: he’s a fake, he’s a fake, he’s a fake. Creator, created. Failing at his one designed purpose in life.

-

Scott lies down on his back, sinking in his heavy comforter. He closes his eyes and sees:

A small tin boy, a windup key of bone sticking from his spine. A tinker man, with tools and red eyes. The boy tries to run in that sad, hitched toy step. But his crank slows its spin, stops. The man scoops him up and resets him. He runs and runs and runs and repeat, repeat. Fear, spin, stop. Restart.

-

Scott’s body is not his own for two reasons. It belongs, it has always belonged, to black forest leaves and Peter’s poison mouth.

He is not his own. He is not. He is simply _not_.

-

“You know we can’t actually, right,” says Stiles, offering Scott a Twizzler.

Scott shakes his head, scanning the room. He doesn’t need to, he can hear all their heartbeats, steady, but he likes to double check. Kira and Lydia are leaned together, studying. Malia paces and mouths her notes. Liam naps, curled up in a chair too small for him.

“Save everyone.” He closes his textbook on his thumb, looking at Scott meaningfully. “We don’t know what’s out there. We have to be ready to accept some tough choices.”

“Choosing the right thing can be the tough choice, sometimes.”

“Yeah, but,” Stiles’ jaw flutters, frustrated, “sometimes there isn’t a right choice, is what I’m saying.”

Scott’s throat is tight. He blinks down at his homework that he doesn’t understand because he hasn’t been able to study all week and wants, overwhelmingly, more than anything, to cry. “There has to be,” he says. “And if there isn’t, then we’ll make one.”

Stiles makes a small sound. He’s upset, now. Scott lets the instinctual apology rot on his tongue. His hands are never big enough, these days, to hold everything he’s supposed to. He’s always compromising, always dropping one thing for another. His homework for fighting the supernatural. Stiles’ moral quandary for his own peace of mind. Twizzlers for the fact that Kira got hurt, just a little, on their last fight and he wasn’t there to stop it, he’s never there to stop it, what has he ever done to deserve even the smallest moment of sweetness.

-

His body is hollow, he knows. It has to be, to hold so much panic. He’s been reading over the same line a dozen times and he can’t get it. It’s the last question on the study sheet, due today. What a fucking failure he is. He laughs at himself, alone in his bedroom, mom already left for her shift that morning. What a pathetic fucking failure. Then again, but this time it cracks and a sob pours out and suddenly he’s on the floor, shaking, fists pressed to his lips, sucking deep, desperate breathes and he still can’t breathe, he can’t, he can’t breathe or save his friends or his mom or himself, he can’t save his grade or this town or anything, he’s useless and awful and he’s going to get everyone killed, and they’re all going to die knowing he ruined their lives--

-

“Sometimes,” he says, voice thick, dry, swollen tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth, “I’m afraid someone’s going to get hurt, really hurt, and I won’t be able to stop it.” This isn’t the whole truth but it’s the most he’s ever admitted, aloud. It isn’t a fear, even, but a recurring nightmare that keeps coming true. He thinks, _I’ve been to more funerals than some people go to their entire lives and I haven’t graduated high school yet._

“You’re the true alpha,” Kira says, eyes glittering in the low light of her bedroom. “I know you can do it, Scott. We all believe in you.”

That isn’t what he wants, but what he wants isn’t fair. He smiles, says, “Thanks,” and kisses her nose.

-

When's a boy not a boy? Why, when he’s a puppet of course.

-

There are only a few times he can be really honest. One of them is in the shower, under blistering water that doesn’t hurt him. It hurts, but it can’t hurt him. Not him, not his perfect healing skin, perfect healing body. He wishes it would. He wishes he was leopard-spotted with tiny burn scars.

Under the spray, he is wholly unreal. None of him exists, not really. He can feel nothing, everything, no one. He, he, he. Who is he, even? What does it matter--it doesn’t.

He couldn’t walk if he tried. He couldn’t scream--and he has tried.

_This is what you really are, when no one’s around to wind you up and let you go. A toy on a shelf doesn’t exist. Things are only real when someone else is around to use them._

-

Under his bed, wrapped in a generic plastic store bag, is a small notebook. It has film titles and beach names and albums by his favorite artists scribbled in the lines. These are the movies he’ll rent, the places he’ll go, the songs he’ll listen to when he gets there, when he leaves. When he goes to college and can find time to go to a restaurant, by himself, finish the books he wants to start, order food he’s never tried. He’ll make it down to San Francisco, see the treasures of Rosa Covarrubias, stand in front of _Woman with Bowl_ , visit the Pacific Worlds exhibit, if he’s not too late. That will be his life. Art and food. That’s what people are made of; each other and experiences. He’s gonna be sand and speakers. He’s gonna sleep for twelve hours and make himself breakfast in the morning without worrying about someone dying while he flips bacon.

-

The claws in his gut are hard and sharp but it’s not the worst pain he’s ever felt. At least, if he dies, it’ll be proof. Only real things decay. Dead boys were alive, once.

Maybe he was, too.

**Author's Note:**

> [“I still want you. You still want me, even though I’m not a real boy?”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2112468/chapters/10595190%0A)  
>  i read that line and felt a punch right to my gut and wrote this, like, immediately. pls go read the fic, it is honestly perfect.  
> i am sad about scott mccall always so check [the tumbls](http://katsofmeer.tumblr.com/) if u 2 enjoy suffering


End file.
